Recycling robots make green viable again ZDNet

A company that makes robots to improve the economics of recycling just raised $16 million. AMP Robotics plans to use the money to develop more powerful AI to aid in its green mission. "Over the last few years, the industry has had their margins squeezed by labor shortages and low commodity prices," explains Shaun Maguire, partner at Sequoia, which led the recent fundraising round. "The end result is an industry proactively searching for cost-saving alternatives and added opportunities to increase revenue by capturing more high-value recyclables, and AMP is emerging as the leading solution." The problem is especially urgent with recent news that China will no longer be accepting waste from the U.S. As I've written, even when China was taking our recyclables the process was extremely inefficient, the bales often poorly sorted.